Expanding Your Advocacy Base

"The last time you're doing something—knowing you're doing it for the last—makes it even more alive than the first."
–Gloria Naylor, Mama Day

EXPANDING YOUR ADVOCACY BASE

ChildCare ActioNews (November, 2002) features a number of advocacy success stories including....

"Jason Sabo of the Center for Public Policy Priorities in Austin, Texas, engaged a new community of activists around the state via the internet. Using a folksy, once-a-week bulletin that covered both state and national news, Sabo began communicating with people in hard-to-reach communities.

"In turn, those people asked him to come and speak at local forums. 'Over the course of a few months, we had people active all over the state who'd never been active before,' says Sabo.

"He polled them on the most pressing issues in their areas, then invited them all to Austin for a statewide meeting. He rallied these new advocates with a clarion call for action from Marian Wright Edelman of the Children's Defense Fund -- while using the polling results as ammunition with state lawmakers. 'One of the things that jumps out of this polling information is that working poor families are losing ground, he says. 'That's a message we want to take to the legislature. We assume it's going to be a budget-cutting session, but we want them to know it shouldn't happen on the backs of the working poor.'"

For a copy of the November 2000 issue of ChildCare ActioNews (as well as other recent issues), go to the "Free Resources" section of www.ChildCareExchange.com.